Top 10 Reasons The Moon Landings Could Be A Hoax

The results of recent surveys have shown that roughly 20% of Americans still believe, to this day, that the U.S. never really did make it to the moon. Conspiracy theorists even came up with the theory that the first ever moon landing was faked by the U.S. government as a way to claim victory in the space race against Russia. Of course they had to come up several reasons to support the claim and the following are just 10 of the many reasons why.

10. The Waving Flag

When the first moon landing was broadcasted on live television, it was obvious how the American flag seemed to be waving and fluttering as astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, planted it. This wouldn’t have been such an issue except for the fact that there is no air in the moon’s atmosphere and therefore no wind whatsoever to cause such an effect on the flag.

9. Lack of Impact Crater

The next claim puts forth the notion that there should be a blast crater underneath the lunar module, as a way of its marking its landing, but there were clearly none; no crater was visible both on video footage and photographs of the landings. Even the fine lunar dust covering the moon’s surface didn’t seem to have been displaced.

8. Multiple Light Sources

The moon only has one strong light source and that happens to be the sun which is why it’s common sense that all shadows in videos or photographs of the moon landings should run parallel to each other. This wasn’t the case, however, and shadows appeared to be falling in different directions suggesting that there might have been multiple light sources – like that on a film set instead of the moon.

7. The Van Allen Radiation Belt

The Van Allen radiation belt surrounds the Earth and is held in practically the same place by the Earth’s magnetic field. It is said that astronauts have to pass through this belt to get to the moon. The catch here, however, is that the belt contains high levels of radiation which could have fried the astronauts, with their not-quite-so-advanced protective layers and coatings, as they made their way to the moon.

6. The Unexplained Object

As seen in the above photograph from the Apollo 12 mission, conspiracy theorists were quick to spot a mysterious object in the reflection of the astronaut’s helmet which bore a very similar resemblance to an overhead spotlight common in film studios. But given the poor quality of the photograph, it’s hard to say if the speculation stands to be true or otherwise.

yes they have I don’t know what you’re smoking or drinking to not believe that but they did. I have proof unlike you ridiculous of an excuse of a theorist. Why do you consider yourselves as such anyway? One of many pieces of evidence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhab86KoVjU

I will have to agree with Pjay Patti Pender here…Mythbusters didn’t really “bust” all the conspiracy wackiness that comes with the moon landing… An example would be that reflection on the helmet and also even though they have placed a flag in a decompressed tank, it still wasn’t on the moon…. It was on Earth where gravity is much different The marked rocks the photos that are photoshopped!.?…. Mythbusters never fully cracked everything that this world consist of

The theory about the flag is that it shouldn’t move in a vacuum. The gravity field of the moon is not a significant factor in that theory. Also notice video of one of the astronauts is bouncing around the moon’s surface and the flag doesn’t move as it should if a person were bouncing around near it and kicking up a breeze.

They made it look like moving, because flag that is pulled by gravity doesn’t looks good, especially during the cold war. If this is REALLY was fake, than the soviet union would say something about it. They were much more powerful that most of Democratic Murcian thinks

I don’t believe in this American scam! We can also talk about the technical qualities from that time, for transmissions without delay and the impossibility of photographic films resist such great variation in temperature.

Hey genius, you think maybe the scientists who sent the astronauts to the moon knew about the temperature variations and designed cameras that would protect the film from the harsh environment? After all, they didn’t spend 25 billion on project Apollo then just send them to the moon with a Kodak Brownie from the 1930’s. What about the fact that it was rocket scientists that sent rocket men to the moon on rockets don’t people like you don’t understand?

These are all really old suggestions, and all have clear explanations. I invite anyone doubting this this to google them. Phil Plait is a good explainer. This is a terrible article. How many times does this rubbish need to be debunked?

And it seems that 80% of all non-Americans are stereotypes, and the rest are just “do what everyone else does” people. I mean really? If you actually did some reasearch, and talked to some people, you would see your statment is incorrect.

in 1969, my brother and I watched the shadow of the apollo command module going across the moon. Then too, Despite all of these Jules Verne critics and their noting of the similarity between his fiction and our reality, there are over tenthousand reasons which show beyond any doubt that we have really been to the moon but then again, you would not want to talk about that because NASA was started by a bunch of NAZI’s and that might make think of another conspiracy theory which was a book like the 1684 publication of Witches Spells which was quite a popular book at the time,much like the book Roots which was a complete hoax but like those fools who think we did not go to the moon, they think that Roots was 100% real, like the Dawin theory of evolution. But, Alex Haily and Charles Darwin both told everyone that their books were only conjecture, probabilty and theory but, no one ever listened to them because we hate to admit that a theory is wrong which why people who complain about “cruelty to animals” eat at some fast food hamburger joint while people who support green peace will drive gasoline powered motorcars. Lets face reality you perverted prevaricates, none of you are very spurious and rather than scutinize what you have before you, you all greet the truth with opprobrium. So now that you realize how all of you autodidacts are as smart as a box of rocks, take your lacking credulity and your quip comments someplace else. THANK YOU

The thing that most Americans are missing here is the title. ‘Top 10 reasons…COULD be a hoax.’ Not ’10 reasons it IS a hoax.’ They have simply taken the 10 most speculated about issues. I have no doubt they’ve ALL been debunked, but it’s still interesting. Why do Americans take everything so personally? Just to top it off. Whether Roots is historically accurate or not is fairly irrelevant. The individual story may or may not be true, but that doesn’t mean it holds no relevance to many of the other stories of African slaves.

There IS wind in space: solar wind. Further, stars on the moon are not visible for the same reason stars cannot be seen during the day on Earth: too much sunlight drowning out other dimmer light sources. On the bright side of the moon, it is ALWAYS daytime. On the dark side, stars are still visible.

the moon is tidally locked to the earth. there isn’t a dark side and light side. there is an earth side and the back side. if one side of the moon always faced the sun, we would see a different version of the face every night, as different portions of it were pointed towards the planet during its orbital cycle.

but you’re dead-on about the reason there’s no stars in the images.

as for the “multiple light sources” pic… topology changes how shadows fall. this should be obvious to anyone not living inside a uniformly lit sphere.

I see you’ve used Jack White’s “photographic analysis” for this article, particularly for the “parallel shadows” and “duplicate backdrop”. Both are utter tripe which I managed to disprove using my own camera.

Its funny. Number 4 actually made me laugh out loud. I am even still chuckling now…Its the fact we have atmosphere that ALLOWS us to see the starts at all…*Sigh* I really love it when people act smart, when they aren’t.

Not true, I’m afraid – if it were, the Hubble Space Telescope would be useless.
The real reason no stars are visible is simply a matter of exposure – the high level of light on the moon’s surface (along with, amongst other things, the absence of any real atmosphere, the high reflectivity of the regolith and the bright white colour of the space suits) meant that the exposures had to be short to avoid completely whiting out the picture. As a result, the stars are simply too dim to show up.

The headline should read ” Top 10 completely DEBUNKED Reasons”. When Galileo discovered & exhibited the Jovian moons to other scientists/astronomers, many of them refused to believe what they saw. They were emotionally invested in their fallacy & chose deliberate ignorance, over hard facts/evidence & logic. Moon hoaxers are much the same way. I bet you could literally fly some of them to the moon, to personally investigate the Apollo landing sites & they’d STILL cry “Hoax!”.

Assuming that they did fake the Apollo 11 landing, what about the other five? Did they fake ALL of them? Wouldn’t there be 6 times as much evidence of a hoax? And where does Apollo 13 fit into all of this?

If it was hoax Russian Government Space agency would catch at that time and Russia would not let it go with a hoax!! These losers do not have any knowledge of scientific idea nor a knowledge. These hoaxers are mostly those Bible belt believed far right wing separatist ignorant in the US and abroad.

I think if it was all fake they would have done a much better job faking it. It’s practically what Americans are best at! They wouldn’t have done such a huge mistake as to have the flag wave if it wasn’t supposed to. Even the dumbest person would catch on to that!

Let see astronauts, ground control team, launch teams, A few hundred news outlet reporters, NASA scientists and engineers and no one spilled the beans?? Bah!!
A conspiracy to defraud the world with an elaborate production involving 1000’s of people. I wonder what the crossover membership between the Lunar Hoax conspiracy and the 911 “truthers” exists??

I’m a former 9/11 truther. I am rightfully ashamed of my history with conspiracy theorists.

But, they’ll never break out of it. I know from experience. Anything
that opposes what I thought to be truth, I’d reject as media propaganda.
It wasn’t until I started asking the real question, “Who gains from
this?” that it all fell apart.

Most conspiracy theories don’t hold up to that simple question of who
gains and how much they gain. 9/11 at least had something to gain, and I
still think the Bush administration turned a blind eye either out of
foolishness or intentional neglect. (Bush had actually planned to invade
Iraq, regardless of 9/11, and he had an economic plan to go with it.
Afghanistan screwed the whole thing up.)

But the idea that it was an inside job? While I used to believe it
was, the motives don’t make so much sense anymore. The time and
resources were unnecessary and impractical. The physics behind it was
also deluded by conspiracy theorists. A few rogue “scientists” would
provide me with some validation while I lay in ignorance of what the
REST of scientists were saying. It’s amazing I never thought global
warming was a hoax, because it’s the same logic there.

tl;dr conspiracies are stupid. Take it from me, an ex conspiracy theorist.

u just caused me to lose all faith in the human race, how dumb and closed minded are you, how much would an annual trip to the moon cost numbnuts, are u gonna pay 4 it?, im not sayin its true or not, but u gotta look at it from every angle, which i dont think u do

If it were true, there will be military bases in the launa. and anyone with common sense would realize the photos, there is simply nothing of dust in the environment and not on the legs of the module, among other evidence …… accept it ….

If the moon landings were faked (and this article of previously debunked theories does nothing to prove it was) don’t you think the USSR would have taken the chance to publicly pants Uncle Sam for the last few years?

This does not explain how in the UK Greenwich observatory they have been monitoring the distance of the Earth to the moon since little mirrors were placed on the moon during the moon landings. Most people simply ignore this fact as it doesn’t fit with the mostly debunked conspiracies.

Radio waves travel in a straight line when the astronnaughts spoke to nasa anyone one on earth with moderate radio technology would be able to tell both exact direction and exact distance that the radio signal came from….. china… soviet union…east germany… cuba…. and every other country on earth would know the signal did or didnt originate on the moon. The distance and direction could not be faked for all points on earth…the usa could not afford to bribe every country and astronomer on earth

okay each one of them was probably claimed by an out standing idiot
1).no air to move it – no air to stop it
2).blast crater – if the were landing at the speed that may create crater we weren’t wasting our time here
3).if someone would study art you may understand the perspective of vanishing point you soulless creatures
4).as i understand it push the radiation to the pole, but lunches are the most effective in the ecuador so the radiation don’t charge up.
5).mysterious object
6). you can’t connect everything to a wire, the suit is moving very smooth instead of bouncing
7).you know why we dont see stars during day? its too bright to see,here the SUN illuminating the surface and the camera adapt to the brightness
8).although i am impressed of you i can’t believe people are so stupid to put it like that
9). editing a photo and putting special effort to delete the cross? no photoshop->see 8
10).sorry to announce you but the moon is big, really big(i head you can see it from space!!!)see 3
no begone you morons

Blind cynicism is worse than blind faith. The authors trot out these tired accusations without even mentioning that they can be debunked by anyone with any real knowledge on the subjects. Why? Because they value ignorance over knowledge. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
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Example: Why no stars? Because the sun is shining just as brightly as it does on Earth, so the cameras were set for daylight exposure! Even today no camera could possibly image stars like that. Go out one night and find a brightly lit parking lot, and see how many stars YOU can see. You’ll see almost none unless you cup your hands to block anything else but black sky from your vision.

10 -The flag isn’t waving . How can you see a flag waving in a STILL PHOTO? The
fabric was creased, and there was a rod in the upper edge to keep the flag
displayed, that’s all. There are only a couple of videos (not still pics) were the flag is “waving”, and those are of the very moments when the astronauts were screwing the flag’s mast in the ground; after leaving the flag alone, in two or three seconds the flag remains still.

9- Impact crater? Why? The LEM’s descent from the lunar orbit to the surface
lasted more than two hours, and most of that time was used in braking
manouvers; so the LEM don’t reached the Moon as a falling brick. At a height of about 10 feet over the surface, the speed of descent was less then ½ foot per second (actually it was more a hovering than even a slow falling) and the exhaust gas pressure at the motor’s nozzle about 10 psi; on the Moon surface, 10 feet below, barely 3 psi. Not enough to blast a crater even in the wet sand of a beach…

And then the motor stoped, so no exhaust gas pressure closer to the soil, thanks so much.
Longer and more detailed explanations (equations included) here:

8 – With multiple light sources what you get are multiple shadows from the same
object, not ONE shadow from EACH object in different directions. But if the
ground in front of each of those objects has a different tilt, the effect in
the pics will be that of shadows in different directions. You can try that at
home: there´s no risk of any harm (althought is recommended adult supervisión)

7- Well, the Van Allen Radiation Belt… that last stand of the conspiranoics. The
levels of radiation in the Belts do change from an area to another (the worst
of it is in the South Atalntic Anomaly, carefully avoided in the Apolo missions) and also have great variations in intensity due to solar activity (carefully considered when planning and scheduling the flights). With barely 2 to 3 hours travelling across the Belts, the amount of radiation wasn’t enough to do any permanent harm to the astronauts.

6- Unexplained object, huh?

5- That’s plain and absolutely false. Serious attemtps to prove that the videos
are just slow-motion versions of footage filmed at some studio have been made,
and the outcome is as preposterous as the premise.

4- My favourite. Well, go and try to get some pics of the stars at 10 A.M. (more or
less, and taking into account the duration of day and night on the Moon, the
relative position of the Sun above the horizon, etc, the moment at wich the pics of the moonlandings were made) and then look for stars in your pic.

No?

Of course, that was in BROAD DAYLIGHT. Well, then, try it at night, far from any
light sources and in a clear night with no Moon. Even under those conditions,
it will take you between 25 to 30 seconds of exposition to get the even brightest stars. The Hasselblad cameras employed had just two preset times of exposition (handling more than that with the big cumbersome gloves the astronauts were using was regarded as impractical) Those times of exposition were 1/250 and 1/125 of a second. BETWEEN 2.500 AND 5.000 TIMES LESS THAN THE REQUIRED TIME OF EXPOSITION.

So, no stars in the moonlanding pics (nor in any pic from any spacial mission, ship or station when illuminated by the sun)

3- Well, the “C” rock… First, if the only pic you have to show us is that above, go back to ´do your homework. For a start, that pic is just a detail of some bigger ones (labelled AS16-107-17445 and 177446) That can be downloaded in High
Definition (and with no “C”, of course) here:

Once there, go to Apollo 16 and the scroll the left tools bar till you found those
two reference numbers.

Somebody may think that the “C” has been removed from those pics, but the truth is just the opposite: the “C” is just something caught when doing a photocopy (and a bad one, BTW). And may somebody explain me, please, why prop rocks used when filming a movie do need be LABELED? With a range of labels from “A” to “Z” Huh?

2 and 1: Well, if you want a real explanation about this two last items, you will find
it in any good photography webpage. However, the cross hairs issue is related
to the bright foreground saturating the image and partially erasing the reticle
crosses (and I cannot imagine why somebody would have edited or painted the
crosses on the pics… To hide… what???); and the duplicate landscape is an easy
one: put a friend in front of you, lets say, 20 feet apart, and take a pic with
a very distant mountain as background. Then, take a step ot two to one side,
until your friend is no longer in the camera field, and shoot another pic.
Compare the two pics, and… the background is exactly the same (actually it isn’t, but you will not see the differences) but your friend is nowhere to be seen.

Ask yourself one question….who had the technology to verify the moon landings and at the same time would be very keen to let the world know it was fake? The Russians, and yet they agreed it happened. Besides, there are prisms on the moon placed by man on to which we shine lasers every day in order to precisely measure the distance to the moon. How else would they get there?

The 2.5x slower walking speed is because of the difference in gravitational acceleration. When your leg reaches the highest point while walking, gravity is what pulls it back down to the ground in front of you. Your leg is nearly in free fall. Using the Kinematic equations, we can see how long it should take for a 1 meter high object in free fall to reach the ground with different gravitational accelerations.

g on earth is 9.8 m/s^2.
g on the moon is 1.62 m/s^2

time = sqrt(1m / ( .5 * g))

So the time it take to fall 1 meter on earth is 0.45 seconds
The time it takes to fall 1 meter on the moon is 1.11 seconds

1.11 / 0.45 = 2.47

So yes, a person walking on the moon sped up 2.5 times would look like a man walking on earth.